


Without you

by BiancaBibi



Category: IT (2017), Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Richie deserves a break, This Is Sad, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, prepare to cry, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 13:47:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16577684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BiancaBibi/pseuds/BiancaBibi
Summary: The days were, dark, cold, slow. Everything felt empty, like nothing was worth living anymore.His improvising, loud, obnoxious self was gone. He couldn’t even smile or crack a joke any more. And it made Richie want to scream.





	Without you

The days were, dark, cold, slow. Everything felt empty, like nothing was worth living anymore. He didn’t feel any more. He just existed.

Wake up, eat, sleep. Wake up again, eat, sleep. Then again. It was all a routine now. His improvising, loud, obnoxious self was gone. He couldn’t even smile or crack a joke any more. And it made Richie want to scream.

Richie didn’t know Mike was diabetic. No one did, really. They hadn’t eaten much that day skipping dinner to go out with their friends. They arrived late and hungry. So, Richie took out a box of sugar-coated chocolate cookies. And Mike ate one, and then another one. But soon, two cookies became ten. Not long after, mike started feeling sick, but Richie brushed it off, saying he’d feel better the next day.

As they silently walked up the stairs of their two-story house, careful not to wake anyone up, Mike suddenly fell, landing with a soft thud echoing through the otherwise silent house. “Mike? Mike?!” Richie immediately panicked, watching as his twin wrapped his arms around his torso. As Richie run up the rest of the stairs, two steps at a time, to wake their parents up, he faintly heard Mike cry. It was the last thing Richie ever heard from his brother.

The ambulance arrived minutes later, but the bad news didn’t come until a few days later.

As his mother – A crying mess, as well as the rest of the family – told them the news, Richie didn’t shed a tear. He didn’t cry through the speech, nor did he cry as he stood up and walked up the stairs. He didn’t cry as he entered his now own room.

It was only when his body fell on the cold mattress of his brother’s still undone bed that he felt the tears start to fall. So, he let himself cry.

Because Mike was dead.

And Richie never got to tell him how much he loved him.

 

Lots of people went to the funeral, but for Richie it felt like he was alone, with the exception of his brother’s dead body, in the coffin, and Eddie. Because Eddie was there, of course he was. When wasn’t he? Richie felt guilt fill his lungs as he bitterly thought ‘that night, he wasn’t there that night.’ It wasn’t Eddie’s fault.

It was his.

Beverly and Stan were there, too, Richie supposed, as well as Will and the rest of the twins’ friends. And his family too. And they were probably all crying, like Richie, heartbroken by their loss. But, right there, with Eddie, grasping each other’s hands, afraid they’d lose each other too, Richie felt like no one could possibly be crying the same tears as him, feeling the same pain as him.

Richie would get over, his therapist explained, eventually. He just had to be ready to let go. But, staring down at his brother’s coffin, Richie thought. He thought about how he had gone to visit Mike to the hospital, how he spent and entire day just holding his brother’s limp body like it was his lifeline, crying desperately for his brother to wake up. And he thought he’d never be ready.

This happened when Richie was 12. He still remembers it like it was yesterday.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry please don't kill meeeee  
> So this is a one shot, but I was thinking on making it a full work, what do you think?


End file.
